Send in the Clowns, actually don't

I hate interviews for many different reasons, but I don't think my hatred can be easily dismissed as an opinion, I believe there is scientific evidence that backs up my position and justifies my point of view.  When you think about what an interview is meant to be, it's meant to be a meeting between people who work for a company and someone who wants to work for that company, designed to assess whether or not that person is the right person to fill a vacancy within that company.  At least, that's what they are meant to be for, but I would argue most interviews don't actually do this.

In Psychology there is a principle known as the Hawthorne effect, this principle simply states that an individual's behaviour will alter whenever that individual believes they are being studied.  In other words, if you feel like you are being scrutinized then you will behave in a way you think the person who is scrutinizing you would want you to behave.  This principle comes from research that was gathered by a company known as Hawthorne Works.  The principle has other names, often simply referred to as the Observer Effect, and there is a substantial body of evidence that backs up this principle and how it works in practice.

Psychological theories aside, apart from the fact that I don't feel people act naturally in interviews, there are other issues I have with the concept.  For example, whenever you go through courses aimed at training people in interview techniques, one of the first things you learn is that what you actually say has very little relevance, how you say it determines everything.  The percentage of relevance of what you say is inconsequential, the bulk of a person's judgement is comprised of the way they read your body language, your attitude, your diction, your accent, and all the non-verbal communication that you engage in with other people.  In this regard, the conclusion I draw is that most interviewers are not judging you as to whether or not you can do the job or whether you are qualified but that they are simply grading you based on your interaction with others, how well you get along with others, and how well they think you would fit into their organization.

Cohesion is important and there is a balance to be found, but I think given how heavily the practice of interviewing people is weighted towards everything else but your experience there is very little surprise when you see people in jobs who are absolutely horrible at them and you are left asking how they ever got them in the first place - the answer is simple, they weren't interviewed based on whether or not they could do the job, they were chosen because they got along with the people who interviewed them or because those people thought they would get along with the people who worked there already.

This deficiency in judgement and identification of most qualified candidates is something that has been growing in our society, and I believe is one of the reasons why youth unemployment around the world is so high - because of the generational divide and the culture shift that those who are older fear if they were to employ too many young people in their organisations.  The visibility of this deficiency in judgement has however grown to an inordinate size where it can't be ignored any longer.  When you look at jobs that are incredibly high profile, in the public eye constantly, and under immense scrutiny, you can easily see how those who are not qualified and are not proficient in their field have taken those jobs.  This isn't something that is simply a matter of opinion any longer, the fact that some of the highest profile jobs in the world have been filled by people who have no experience whatsoever demonstrates this is true objectively.  The fact the President of the USA could ever be someone with zero political experience and zero real world experience of anything the job entails demonstrates that nobody actually cares whether you can do the job, all they care about is how convincing you can be towards those who have the power to put you into that position.

This isn't just true of the USA but of the UK and many other countries too.  Those who would be best equipped to undertake the roles never make it anywhere near those positions.  In many ways I do look to the future with anticipation, with the rise of Artificial Intelligence there is a guarantee that the most adept algorithm will be the one that prevails, that the most efficient processor will be the one that is used, that the most accurate results will be those that are eventually realised.  When human bias is removed, then efficiency will be achieved because it will no longer be a case of likeability or popularity, it will be a case of technical expertise.